Vacation Robo-Post: They Make Lists, So We Don't Have To

The always-brilliant PopMatters has come up with an exhaustive, eye-opening and nimbly argued list of the best TV shows on DVD. The list went up in October, but that’s the beauty of DVD: there’s no such thing as coming to it too late!

Having done a gigundous TV list of my own recently, I have no energy or inclination to debate theirs in detail, but it’s pretty damn impressive. Divided into five sublists–“classic,” “outsider,” “new network,” “fringe” and “beyond the envelope” TV–the list does a great job of acknowledging obvious greats (while seeing the nonobvious in them) and expanding our sense of great TV by making the case for noncanonical shows. (You will never believe me, but I actually did consider putting Nick’s The Adventures of Pete and Pete on my All-TIME 100 list, and after reading PopMatters’ argument, I dearly wished I had.) I’m not quite sure why Freaks and Geeks, which aired on NBC, is classified under “new networks,” but maybe it’s because the show should have aired on The WB or Fox.